Passion Blue (30 page)

Just for a moment. I’ll just catch my breath, and then I’ll move on
.

She didn’t know how long she crouched there, the noise of the city swirling around her. Something splashed her from a passing cart; someone kicked her, uttering a curse. In her dazed, exhausted state, it all felt distant and unreal. But at last she became aware of a voice, saying the same words over and over.

“Girl. Girl. Girl, wake up.”

With enormous effort Giulia opened her eyes. Bending over her was a tall woman in a dark cloak, with a pale face and hair like spun gold, braided in a
coronet around her head.

“Girl,” the woman said again. “Have you lost your way?”

Giulia tried to answer, but her mouth was too dry. She nodded.

“Here.” From her sleeve, the woman produced a flask. “Drink this.”

The flask held cider, crisp and delicious. Giulia drank it all.

“Thank you.” She offered the flask back to the woman. “I was…very thirsty.”

The woman slipped the flask into her sleeve again. “Where is it you wish to go?”

“Might you be able to tell me the way to the market? Or possibly the convent of Santa Marta?”

“The convent.” The woman smiled. “I know it well. It’s not far from here, but the way is complicated. Better that I show you.”

“I don’t want to put you to the trouble—”

“No trouble.” The woman’s eyes fell for a moment to the book, still clutched to Giulia’s chest, then shifted back to Giulia’s face. “Rise now, girl, and follow me.”

She waited as Giulia scrambled to her feet, then set off at a measured pace. Giulia limped after her. The cider had given her back some strength; she was still exhausted, but at least she could walk. After a little while she smelled the odor of the canal—and then suddenly they were in a street she knew. She could see the church of Santa Marta in the distance, and beyond it, the long red snake of the convent wall.

“Here we are.” The woman turned, still smiling
her enigmatic smile. She stood under the first sun of the new day, her golden hair gleaming like gossamer. Her eyes, Giulia saw, were the blue of summer skies.

“Thank you. I’m sorry to have taken you out of your way.”

The woman inclined her head. Without another word she started back in the direction in which they’d come. As she walked by, her cloak parted for a moment and Giulia glimpsed her gown—blue like her eyes, but deeper, more lustrous. Then she was past, walking at that same steady pace. She entered the shadow of an arcade and vanished from Giulia’s sight.

Slowly, Giulia made her way down the avenue and stopped before the wooden door that marked the entrance to Santa Marta. Beside it was the grate that covered the opening to the wheel, through which the nuns brought the things of the world into the convent without breaching their sacred space. How easy it would be to slip the book through that opening, where it would be discovered the next time the wheel was turned. Humilità would have her secrets back. Giulia would never have to face her, or admit what she had done.

But then Humilità would never know the full truth of what had happened. She’d see Matteo’s copy of the cipher and guess he was responsible, but she would never realize how profoundly her father had betrayed her.

No matter what I do, the ending is the same
, Giulia thought. She could put the book into the wheel and walk away. Or she could ring the bell and confess—
and then, surely, be thrown out again.
Santa Marta is lost to me
.

Painting is lost to me
.

She bowed her head over the book she held so tightly. For the first time since Ormanno had kidnapped her, she allowed herself to truly understand.

She raised her face at last and rubbed the tears from her cheeks with her sleeve. Only one thing was left: after so much lying, to tell Humilità the truth. She could never make things right. But she could at least tell the truth.

She crouched down and opened the book to the page for Passion blue. The square of color caught the light, impossibly brilliant, as if the sun were shining not on but through it.

I’ll never see Passion blue again
.

She removed Matteo’s copy of the cipher and folded it, then unfastened the talisman and her horoscope fragment from around her neck and thrust them, with the paper, inside the bodice of the red dress. She closed the book and rose.

The bell rope hung by the door. For an instant, she was seized by a vivid memory: of herself, standing before the sorcerer’s gate on the day everything began. It seemed a lifetime ago. She hardly recognized that girl, the girl she had been then—a girl who thought to bend the stars to her will, careless of the consequences. A girl who did not know her heart’s desire, and so had lost it.

She stepped forward and rang the bell.

Once she realized who Giulia was, the doorkeeper fairly dragged Giulia inside. But it was not Humilità she summoned, as Giulia requested, but Suor Margarita.

“What have you done, you wicked girl?” The novice mistress had come running; her cheeks were flushed and she was breathing hard. “Where have you been?”

“I need to talk to Maestra Humilità,” Giulia said.

“Oh no, my girl.” Suor Margarita put her hands on her hips. “I’m the one you’ll talk to. Confess this instant where you have been these last two nights.”

“I…I was kidnapped.”

“
Kidnapped?
Is that what you call it? Don’t take me for a fool, Giulia Borromeo. I know all about your midnight
excursions. Alessia has told me everything.”

Alessia. Giulia had forgotten her. “It isn’t what you think.”

“Is it not? Look at you, got up like a harlot! And now your young man has ruined you and abandoned you, and you think you can come back to us as if nothing had happened!” Her eyes fell on the book. “What is that you’re holding? Give it to me at once!”

“It’s for Maestra Humilità—”

“Do you dare defy me?” Suor Margarita stepped forward and slapped Giulia across the face, then wrenched the book from her grasp. Instinctively Giulia reached after it, but the gatekeeper seized her shoulders and held her back.

“Send for Suor Veronica,” Suor Margarita instructed the gatekeeper. “Tell her I need her to open a discipline cell.”

“Please.” Giulia’s face throbbed from the blow. “Just let me talk to Maestra Humilità—I can explain everything—”

“Oh, you’ll explain. You will indeed.” Suor Margarita tucked the book under her arm and took hold of Giulia’s wrist. “Now come, and quietly, or I’ll slap you until your ears ring.”

Suor Veronica, the bursar, was already waiting when they reached the discipline cells. She selected a key from the ring she carried and unlocked one of the doors. Suor Margarita thrust Giulia through it.

“Are you ready yet to tell me the truth?”

“I
have
told the truth.”

“Have it your way, then, stubborn girl. I shall return tomorrow and ask again. Use the time to pray
upon your sins.”

“Give the book to Maestra Humilità!” Giulia cried, as the door began to close. “Please! She needs it back!”

The key scraped in the lock. Giulia heard the two nuns’ footsteps, fading away.

She stood staring at the iron grate set into the heavy oak of the door, dazed. Ten minutes ago she had been free, standing in the street. Now she was a prisoner again. But Humilità would come to her, once Suor Margarita gave her the book.

Surely she’ll come
.

She turned. The discipline cell was tiny—perhaps twice the width of her outstretched arms, and only a few steps longer than the bed that was its only furnishing. A chamber pot stood in one corner. A crucifix hung below a grated clerestory window.

She was shivering. A blanket was folded at one end of the bed; she shook it out and pulled it around her, then lay down on the thin straw mattress. The sun reached through the window, casting a rectangle of light on the whitewashed wall opposite. She could hear her heartbeat in the silence, until sleep took her and she heard nothing at all.

The sound of the lock roused her. For a moment she did not know where she was, but then came the rush of memory. She sat up just as the door swung open.

It was Humilità.

The workshop mistress closed the door, then stood against it, her hands tucked into her sleeves, her expression unreadable. Giulia scrambled off the bed.

“Thank you for coming, Maestra,” she said. She could not have been asleep for very long—the rectangle of sun had moved only a little way across the wall. She was acutely aware of the picture she made, in her dress of harlot red, its skirts filthy from her flight, her hair half-pulled out of its braid. Her blistered feet stung as if they were resting on coals.

“Margarita believes you ran away with your lover.” Humilità’s voice was remote and cold. “And that you have returned because he abandoned you. Is that true?”

“No, Maestra. It isn’t true.”

“But you did steal my book. Why did you bring it back?”

“I didn’t steal it, Maestra.”

“Do not lie to me, Giulia. The truth is what I want, however terrible it may be.”

“I didn’t steal it,” Giulia repeated. “But…it is my fault it was stolen.”

She reached into her bodice and drew out the folded paper. Wordlessly, she held it toward Humilità.

A pause, then the workshop mistress stepped forward and took it. She unfolded it. Giulia, watching, saw how her face changed as she read, how the blood drained from her cheeks. She stood for a moment without moving, except for the slight trembling of the hand that held the paper. Then the strength seemed to go out of her all at once, and she sat down heavily on the bed.

“Tell me,” she said, in a voice Giulia hardly recognized. “Tell me how you came by this.”

And Giulia did. She told Humilità how she had planned to escape, how she had met Ormanno, how he
had deceived her and how she had embraced his deception, how her change of heart had led her to discover his true intentions. When she spoke of what had happened in Matteo’s study, Humilità’s face went tight and her mouth turned down—but other than that she betrayed no emotion, and she did not interrupt, even to ask a question. It was harder than Giulia could have imagined to speak into that silence.

“I know you have no reason to believe me,” she said at last. She hadn’t confessed the talisman, for she did not want to be accused of sorcery. But that was the only thing she had held back. She’d admitted every one of her lies. She’d spared herself no condemnation. “I can’t prove I didn’t know what Ormanno planned, or that he kidnapped me against my will. But I swear before God that all I’ve said is true. I…I know I betrayed you even so, because I lied to you, I lied to everyone, even though I never meant for anything to come of it except me leaving Santa Marta. I know that everything that happened is my fault. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She had run out of words. At some point during her story she’d sat down again, to spare her burning feet.

“I know my father,” Humilità said softly. Her face was still dreadfully pale. Her eyes were fixed on the paper in her hand. “I know the man he is. Even so, I never imagined—” She broke off. “And yet…and yet, I cannot honestly say I am surprised.”

Giulia had tried to prepare herself for Humilità’s reaction. Fury, disbelief, grief, or all three—those she had expected, but not this quiet, immediate acceptance. It made her feel, if possible, even worse.

“But to use you against me, my pupil, of whom I had such hopes…And Ormanno! So competent and charming he seemed when he was here, though I understand better now the source of his curiosity about me. I suppose I cannot fault you completely for allowing yourself to be deceived by him, since I was taken in as well. I wonder…” Again Humilità paused. “I wonder if he lied to you about more than you think. Perhaps the scheme was his and he tempted my father to it, not the other way around.”

Giulia swallowed, her throat dry from so much talking. “I think he told the truth.”

“Can you ever know which is which, from a liar?”

“No,” Giulia admitted.

“Well. It hardly matters. This.” Humilità held up the paper. “This is what matters.” Her dark eyes, so like her father’s—not just in their shape and color but in their power—bored into Giulia’s. “Did you really love that boy, Giulia?”

“I thought I did. But I think I mostly loved what I thought he could give me. I’ve always wanted to…belong somewhere. And then I learned I wanted painting. I thought I could have all of it, with him.”

“You were deceiving yourself,” Humilità said harshly. “You would have been a rival. No man can bear that from a woman.”

“I should have understood sooner. I know that, Maestra. I know I was stupid. I know I was selfish. But I didn’t know what I wanted when I came here. I didn’t know what it was
possible
to want.”

“I told you what was possible, in the market, the
day we went to my father’s house.” The anger was there now, hot and bitter. “Perhaps I expected too much. I saw your unwillingness to be among us, but I thought I could speak to your talent. I thought that even if your mind did not fully comprehend, your talent, the great and beautiful gift God gave you, would understand.”

“It did,” Giulia said miserably. “I did.”

“But too late.”

The words were like stones. Giulia had known—of course she had known. That did not lessen the pain.

Humilità got to her feet. She still held her father’s copy of the cipher, crumpled in her fist.

“One more question. Why did you come back?”

“I had to bring you the book and the copy. I had to tell you what your father did.”

Humilità shook her head. “You could have placed them in the wheel. I would have guessed the truth, or close enough, when I saw my father’s writing. I want to know why you knocked on the door and asked for me. Did you think, by returning to me what is mine, you could convince me to take you back into the workshop?”

“No. I know…” For a moment Giulia lost her voice. “I know there’s no chance of that. I just needed to tell you the truth. All the truth, about everything.”